Key-texts for Latin American Sociology

BEIGEL, FERNANDA ED.

SAGE

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2019 p. 433

978-1-5264-9026-1

Peripheral scientific communities have been often misrepresented as lacking ?autonomy,? because they are located in social spaces besieged by powerful external forces, such as government interventions, politicization, and the ?influence? of foreign models. This misrepresentation has been propagated not only by established academic communities, who have played an historic role in establishing criteria for ?universal? objectivity, but peripheral communities themselves, which pursued the illusion of producing ?pure? autonomous scientific knowledge, convinced of the mythical image built by the ?centers of excellence?. On its part, nationalism complemented this endeavour, insisting that this knowledge should be coherent with the nation?s ?essence.? This book?s goal is to deconstruct this very entrenched platitude, apparent in debates on the state of science in the periphery: the conviction that there is ?original? knowledge abroad, which comes from ?pure? knowledge disciplines that are not exposed to external interference. A platitude that comes along with the tendency to measure peripheral scientific communities through the standards embodied by American and French scientific communities. The nature and scope of LA Sociology is a complex issue, as it is the result of transnational, regional, national and local inputs. It is true that authors from outside LA have had a major impact on the development of Sociology, such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Lazarsfeld, Giddens, Goffman, and Bourdieu. But we can also point to a set of ?classics? within LA. ?Scientific? and ?critical? sociology (crafted since the 1950s) are essential to understanding local debates and the contribution of this regional tradition to ?international sociology?. SSIS Project on Key-texts of World Sociologies is aimed precisely at exploring a diversity of regional traditions in order to establish an international dialogue. The volume proposed here is the result of a critical debate made by a scientific committee formed specially for this project, which discussed on what is LA Sociology. The committee stressed the fact that it is not merely the Sociology of Latin America ?which can be practiced from other regions in the typical area studies. For us, Latin American Sociology is the production of knowledge on the region made by scholars based in the region and experiencing its conditions of production. And, related to the latter, the committee also debated on what constitutes a ?classic? in LA Sociology and the need to go beyond this category in order to select "key-texts" that can provide tools for current debates. The Scientific Committee thus has made great efforts to include contributions from as many countries as possible, showing internal diversity, in terms of national and subregional traditions?such as those from Central America and the Andes.